Interactive communication systems, such as those employing video display terminals, are well known in the art, such as disclosed, by way of example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,064,490; 4,054,911; 4,296,476; 4,143,360; 4,191,956; 4,122,519; 3,903,402; 4,001,807; 4,001,785; 4,075,686; 4,084,229; 4,251,291; 3,746,780; 3,668,307; 3,836,888; 3,752,908; 3,691,295; 3,968,327; 4,008,369; 4,028,733; 3,757,225; 3,814,841; 4,117,605; 4,264,925 and 4,164,024. Today, this field is a very active one, particularly with the advent and wide spread use of microprocessors in many business applications, as well as in personal computers, such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,296,476. These prior art interactive systems have expanded dramatically in the field of cable television, such as disclosed in many of the aforementioned exemplary patents, both in two-way communication systems, such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,691,295 and 3,668,307 by way of example, and in one-way cyclical transmission systems such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,064,490 and 4,054,911 by way of example, as well as in real-time interactive systems such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,264,925 by way of example. Moreover, point-of-sale terminals have become almost a total replacement for the cash register in today's businesses. The restaurant business, however, has been very slow to modernize in the area of service to the public except for modern fast-food operations, still relying on separate waitress service for order taking and separate entertainment features such as music boxes or video games, and the computer revolution has really not caught up. Rather, increased efficiency in restaurant service has primarily been focused on better manual systems, such as the one developed at the Tifflin Inn in Denver, Colo. where a food coordinator person in the kitchen would interface between the waitresses, who never left the dining room, and the cook using busboys to transport the order which were assembled on carts. This system, however, although sucessful, was still a manual system and did not integrate food and entertainment functions. Thus, although cash register type of point-of-sale systems and automatic order entry systems have made in-roads into the restaurant business, as has distributed interactive video game technology, applicants are not aware of any prior art systems which have sucessfully integrated interactive entertainment and food functions so that a plurality of independent table station terminals, via down-line loading and two-way communication with a central data base, can accomplish, among other things, transmission of orders to the kitchen, independently selectable down-loading of entertainment modules to the table stations for interactive play at the terminals; automatic computation of composite bills for both food and entertainment, and accumulation of detailed information for restaurant management.
These disadvantages of the prior art are overcome by the system of the present invention.